


Plots, Pirates and Propositions

by facetofcathy



Category: Leverage
Genre: Alternate Universe, Character of Color, Gen, Pirates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-22
Updated: 2009-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-05 00:16:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/35636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/facetofcathy/pseuds/facetofcathy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This was originally posted on Talk Like a Pirate Day, and I was seized with the need for a Leverage Pirate AU.</p><p>Unfortunately no one talks like a pirate in this story.  But, there are kisses, and a definite Hardison/Parker/Spencer vibe, in a somewhat historically accurate 1830's pirate tale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Plots, Pirates and Propositions

"You're sure this ship is safe?" Hardison asked.

Madame Devereaux laughed, an honest happy sound, and she smiled and touched his arm in a show of brazen forwardness. "If the Colonel says it is safe ...." Her accent was amazing, and Hardison took a moment to marvel at it. To the average person in these parts, these parts being mostly British, she sounded authentically French. To someone a little more fluent in the language, she sounded like the daughter of a wealthy Montréaler putting on airs in the colonies, and doing it very well. Lies within lies—she was very good.

"Madame," he said and bent to touch his lips to her hand, "you have been very kind to this poor traveller. Please give my regards to Captain Ford."

"I will, Monsieur Hardison, I will, and don't trouble yourself, there haven't been pirates in these waters in fifty years."

Hardison nodded, let himself look relieved and clutched his leather-bound book and his valise closer to his chest. To her, he was the bookish Alexander Hardison, Lawyer, Dentist, Inventor, late of Boston, Massachusetts, seeking a new life in the free nation of Haiti with all his worldly, and valuable, goods stored in his one bag. Some of that was even true.

The ship Colonel Ford had suggested was large enough to provide a space on the deck where Hardison could work on his sketches. The inventor profession on his card was one of the true parts of his story. He had ideas, hundreds of them, machines and devices and clockworks, all of them sketched out in glorious detail. If only they could be made real, he could free men for greater things, free them to learn like he had, but first he needed financing. If he was right about Colonel Ford, soon enough he'd have an opportunity to get it.

Being raided by a pirate ship was really quite exhilarating. Hardison did two things while the pirates swarmed the ship. He made sure to get captured early—a bloody head was not part of his plan—and he made sure to keep his notebook safely close. He watched as the pirates rounded up the rest of the passengers and assembled everyone on the deck. He spotted the sack of coin that passed from one of the pirates to the First Mate of the ship. Now, all that was left was to wait for the appearance of the Pirate Captain.

The lesser pirates moved among them, collecting valuables. Hardison had one modest appearing watch which he surrendered without qualm. It was a good enough effort, but he'd be happy to have an excuse to construct another. The pirate that seized it from him was a burly brute, long hair barely restrained by a dirty scrap of cloth tied around his head, shirt the colour of blood straining over his muscled body. He sneered up at Hardison while he snatched up the watch, and Hardison decided to test the man with a smile that had a little heat in it. The man, for all he was a scruffy-looking beast of a pirate, had the loveliest blue eyes.

The man didn't turn in disgust, or shove Hardison rudely, rather he paused and looked a little intrigued. He walked away studying the watch he'd taken a little more closely. Hardison smiled, satisfied twice over with what he'd accomplished.

There was a commotion along the rail of the ship, and Hardison turned in time to see a flash of darkest black against the bright blue sky. If the wave of fidgeting and muttering that passed through the pirates was any indication, the black-clad figure that had slid so effortlessly and gracefully down one of the ropes joining the two ships was the Pirate Captain.

Hardison's blue-eyed friend pushed through the crowd, indiscriminate in his shoving of civilian or fellow pirate. He stopped in front of Hardison and glared. "Captain wants to see you," he said.

Hardison barely restrained himself from jumping to his feet. He tamped down his eagerness, and attempted a sullen and fearful attitude as he followed Blue Eyes to meet the Captain.

He was ushered into the Captain's quarters, which had been efficiently stripped bare. The only thing left were a few books strewn on the floor and one chair. Hardison itched to snatch up the books and save them, but he had business to focus on, so he curbed his impulse. The Pirate Captain was a slight fellow, dressed all in black, sporting an amazing pair of leather boots covered in buckles and straps, and Hardison was instantly immersed in imagining their component parts, the shapes of the leather pieces, the bits of metal forming the buckles; it was his besetting sin to lose himself in that way.

The Captain was turning around, and Blue Eyes, who still had a tight grip on his arm jostled him to attention. "This is the man," Blue Eyes said.

Hardison was not looking at a slight man with a taste for flamboyant garments; instead, he was feasting his eyes on the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. This, then, was the most illusive and illustrious Captain Parker. Never in his wildest dreams had he dared hope to be taken by these pirates. She was glorious, blonde hair confined in a tight black leather cap and clad in black—they looked like soft, soft silk—trousers and shirt, and the boots, those glorious boots, and she was talking about something, but Hardison's mind had wandered down a path it really shouldn't the minute he'd thought the words _taken_ and _pirate_ together.

He glanced over at Blue Eyes again, and that was no better, because the man had pulled off the tie around his hair and it was curling and straggling around his face and he was wearing that red shirt, and trousers that were definitely not loose or flowing, and Hardison wrenched his thoughts back to business; he had plans to see out.

"Spencer tells me this card was tucked into your watch," Captain Parker was saying. She looked as though she had said it more than once.

"It was, Captain, indeed," Hardison said.

"It says you have a business proposition for the Captain."

"It does, yes."

"So?" she arched one perfectly formed brow and dropped into an old wooden chair, legs splayed casually, head tipped back, the picture of piratical indifference to all of society's rules.

"You will have heard that the great nation of Haiti is forced to pay blood money to the French." he said.

Spencer snorted rudely behind him. "Everyone knows that. And everyone knows the shipments of gold are guarded so well that only a fool would try to take them."

"A fool, yes," Hardison said, "or a man with some inside information."

Parker remained the picture of indifference, but Hardison had seen her freeze at his words for barely an instant. She was hooked. Stealing the Haitian payment to France, 150 million francs, was a once in a lifetime opportunity. He knew he had her interest. In the job at least.

"I don't have time to listen to fairy stories," she said.

"I don't have time to tell them," Hardison countered.

"You work with me you take my orders," she said. She stood and walked up to him, so close he could feel the brush of silk against his hand, and see the fine white scar that graced her cheek. "You take my orders in all things," she said a little more huskily.

"Aye, Captain," he said, just as huskily.

She moved like lightening, her hands, strong and sure gripped his face and this was a test, he knew, but he could no more turn away from her, and she pulled him down and kissed him fiercely and now Hardison was hooked, he surely was. He would follow her into hell.

She let him go, too soon, far too soon, and stepped back. "Spencer," she said, "get his story out of him. All of it."

"Aye, Captain," Spencer said, and turned a speculative gaze Hardison's way.

Captain Parker was watching Spencer closely. "Get whatever else he's willing to offer up too," she said, as she swept out of the room.

Oh now, Hardison really was hooked, firmly and completely. He just had to figure out how to convince his pirate captors to give the gold back to Haiti once they'd stolen it. Well, most of it, anyway. He had a few ideas on how to accomplish that, and if the dirty little smile on Spencer's face was anything to go by, now was the time to start.


End file.
